Ubuntu server and power off

[Colin Law]

2012/5/7 James Plate <james.plate at gmail.com>:
> On 05/07/2012 03:31 AM, Antonio Fernández Pérez wrote:
>> Hi everybody,
>>
>> I have configured a machine to print Wi-Fi tickets with Ubuntu Server
>> and OpenBox desktop manager that launch a Java graphical application
>> on boot. If the machine will be shutdown by power button, what effects
>> could to have? Could it affect to some partition? Could corrupt the
>> system and not start? There are some tool to repair the boot and make
>> that the system boots normally?

>>  [pointless Spanish (I think) legal rubbish deleted - even more pointless than normal since this is an English speaking list]

> Yes it most certainly can cause hardware issues, including but not
> limited to corrupted sectors on your hard disk.

Though in practice it is very rare that it actually causes any
problems with modern file systems.  As far as I can remember I have
never lost anything on Linux when this happens except for data in
files on which I was currently working, or once when the system was
trashed by a power failure in the middle of a kernel upgrade.  But
that was caused by the fact that I had a half installed kernel, which
was not good.

@James, what problems can it cause apart from corrupting data being
written at the time of failure?

Colin